MUMBAI: Mumbai stand-in captain Siddhesh Lad has called on the BCCI to do away with 9am starts for knockout matches in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, saying the scheduling gives a clear advantage to teams bowling first and makes the toss a decisive factor. Lad’s remarks came after Mumbai lost to Karnataka by 55 runs (via the VJD method) in the quarterfinals in Bengaluru on Monday. He suggested that all knockout matches be played in a day-night format to ensure equal conditions for both teams.Asked to bat first by Karnataka, who won the toss at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence, Mumbai slided to 60 for four in the 18th over, before fighting back through a half-century by Shams Mulani (86 off 91 balls) and support acts by Lad (38 off 58 balls) and Sairaj Patil (33 off 25 balls) to finish at 254 for eight in 50 overs. Karnataka coasted to 187 for one in 33 overs, with Devdutt Padikkal (81 not out off 95 balls) and Karun Nair (74 not out off 80 balls) going strong, before rain and bad light stopped play.“It doesn’t make sense to start the quarterfinal matches of VHT at 9 am. The ball was seaming around for around 40-45 overs of our innings, and our young batsmen were being beaten. Any cricketer will tell you how it’s such a big disadvantage to the team batting first. In those conditions, you can’t put up a good score while batting first. If you lose early wickets, it’s very difficult to stage a recovery. Still, we made a decent score. To add to our woes, the pitch at CoE had a generous grass cover. Combine that with a 9am start, and it’s trouble for the team batting first,” Lad fumed, while talking to TOI on Tuesday.“I request the BCCI to stage the VHT quarterfinals in the Day/Night format from the next season, so that any team batting first doesn’t face a disadvantage. I can understand that you can’t play day/night matches during the league stage, because there are many teams involved. However, you can play under lights in the KOs because only eight teams are there,” Lad stressed.Lad’s suggestion has found an echo in former India batsman and ex-Punjab captain Mandeep Singh. “As we saw in the first two quarterfinals of VHT, it’s about winning the toss, and winning the match. In our List A cricket, matches start at 9am. There is moisture in the wicket. For a substantial part of the first innings, the conditions are tough for batting, which gives an undue advantage to the fielding side. I remember that during the 2022-23 season, we were playing our Vijay Hazare Trophy matches at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad,” Mandeep said in a video on Instagram.“Due to the big stands there, there would hardly be any sunlight inside the stadium. There were four matches at that ground, and on all occasions, the team batting second won the match. Saurashtra were the worthy champions that time, but the toss was a very big factor that time. I hope that the same is not the case this time and the team batting first too wins a match,” Mandeep said.“In Jaipur (where Mumbai played their league matches), you can still bat well in the morning because the wicket is dry. However, in Bengaluru, especially on a red soil pitch at CoE with a big tinge of green, it’s tough to score runs and keep the wickets in the morning time,” Lad felt.“I’m not making up excuses for our defeat. But this (early start in VHT) has been happening for a long time now. It’s not about us losing or winning a match. This needs to change in the future,” asserted the 33-year-old.“We had our issues. We were without (in-form) Sarfaraz Khan and Tushar Deshpande, which meant that our pace attack was inexperienced, and we dropped a couple of catches that Padikkal offered at the start of his innings. However, he too was tentative at the wicket, as the ball was moving a bit at the start of the second innings too. Imagine how much the ball was seaming around in the first innings,” Lad lamented.
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